OCTOBER 18, 2002

Team bosses consider the F1 system

Formula 1 team owners have an extraordinary amount of power, compared to participants in many other sports. The Concorde Agreement gives teams a strong voice in deciding the rules and regulations of the sport - and that is becoming more and more of a problem because the teams can never agree on anything because they have such differing motivations. This has led to a complete log-jam in decision-making in recent years and inflexibility in the sport. Now some of the team bosses are beginning to reach the conclusion that it is not in the best interests of the sport for the teams to have a voice in the decision-making process and that it might be better if rule-making was left to the FIA.

Some team bosses have spoken privately about this but now Eddie Jordan has gone on the record, telling AUTOSPORT magazine that "the teams by nature will only think about themselves. We are a very selfish bunch of individuals, probably rightly so, and we can only see our position and what's right for our team."

There has been pressure for some time for the Concorde Agreement to be changed but unless there is unanimous agreement between the signatories that is not going to happen - which means that nothing can change until the current agreement ends in 2007. We believe that one of the proposals made by Paul Stoddart at Suzuka was to take away the regulatory power of the teams.